by Heather Boyd
Whitney made a little sound, half gasp, half moan, as he held her close.
He backed her up against the nearest tree, eagerly exploring her curves once more.
She pushed against him weakly. “Acton, do you make a habit of seducing women?”
Her question startled him more than words could say. He was seducing her, and he’d never meant to. He drew back to stare at her, cheeks warming under her scrutiny. “No.”
She stared at him too, her breasts rising and falling fast beneath her damp gown. “Probably a good idea, since you are to marry,” she warned, but then a smile teased the corners of her mouth upward. “But I do feel special.”
He didn’t know how to respond to that but he fought his own smile. At least she was not offended by his manhandling. “What the devil am I doing following you again?”
“I am asking myself the same question. You don’t want me.”
“And you’ve made it clear you don’t want me.” He was engaged to marry, and yet he was filled with doubts about himself and pretty much everything in his life. The only certain thing was his attraction to Whitney. He cleared his throat. “I do not regret what just happened.”
“I’d be offended if you did,” Whitney promised, eyes flashing. She gestured toward the gateway. “I have to go back to the children. I promised their mothers I would watch over them.”
Confused by the abrupt change in her manner, he fell into step and stopped at the archway when she did. In their absence, the children had settled down to watering the plants at last. They crisscrossed the walled enclosure, working together to get the job done. Each one appeared half drowned and vastly untidy, but all seemed very happy.
He leaned against the wall, away from the temptation of Whitney Crewe. “What brought this on?”
Whitney leaned against the opposite arch, her eyes fixed on him. “The long journey had made them quarrelsome, so…a little chore disguised as a game…and Lady Carrington has an hour or so of peace now, and will have seven very sleepy children by bedtime.”
“You’re very good with children.”
Whitney laughed. “My cousin would claim that is because I still am one.”
“I am not surprised by that,” he said. But when she frowned, he quickly clarified why. “Louth seems a very serious fellow. I don’t think he’d have joined in.”
“He’s a good man but not much like me, I am sorry to say.”
That he easily believed. “What is the rest of your family like?”
Whitney glanced down at her bejeweled fingers, and then clasped her hands together. “Louth is my only living relative. My mother and his were cousins.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“I am, was, an orphan. Just like these children.” She shrugged. “My parents died when I was quite young, I barely remember them now. I went to live with my aunts and uncles. None of them had children, so it was a lonely life, even if they doted on me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I was well loved, but they’re all gone now.” She held out her hands, displaying the odd collection of rings on her fingers. “This is all I have of them.”
He counted the array of mismatched rings she wore, and his heart squeezed painfully, especially with the way she played with an incomplete one. “You have lost a stone,” he noted.
“A casualty of my carelessness.” She winced and turned the empty setting into her palm. “I keep hoping to discover it somewhere.”
He frowned. “What was it? The stone?”
“It was an emerald,” she told him. “My uncle Willard traded gems sometimes and he told me it was the best he’d ever come across.”
Everett had found an emerald among his clothing the night he’d met Whitney. Without knowing her identity, he’d tucked it away, hoping to meet the owner again and return it. But later, because Whitney would never agree to see him alone, he’d not been able to confirm if it had been hers. “I have it, Whitney. I have your emerald.”
Whitney blinked. “You do?”
“When I called to see you in London, it was in my pocket to be returned to you.”
“Oh.” Whitney surprised him by not asking for it immediately. Instead, she smiled and said, “I’m glad to know it was not lost after all.”
He’d almost lost it to a thief the night his engagement had been announced, though. Probably wise not to mention that and worry her unnecessarily. He searched his pockets, finding it tied into his handkerchief. “There.”
“Thank you,” she whispered. “It means the world to me.”
“It’s very valuable,” he agreed.
“I always assumed it was, but that is not why I wanted it back.” She clenched it tightly in her hand. “I could easily buy a new stone.”
Curious, he dared ask about her situation. “Your parents provided well for you?”
“Yes, and my aunts and uncles made me their beneficiaries, but I’d rather have my family back than have their money,” Whitney confessed.
He caught her hand and squeezed. His glove squelched and dripped water onto the ground between them.
She shook off his grip with a soft laugh. “Are you here to see Taverham or your bride?”
He flinched. “Are Alice and her parents here?”
Guilt filled him because, once he’d seen Whitney, all thoughts of his bride had vanished from his mind. He hadn’t given one thought to what he was doing, and to whom he was doing it with.
“Not now. They must have left, oh, a mere half hour before you arrived.” Whitney bit her lip, her smile growing pained. “The children were too noisy for the Quartermanes to tolerate, I suspect.”
He glanced toward the children again. They were loud, but it wasn’t intolerable. “So you brought them outside to play.”
She nodded, but given the way her smile fell, he sensed there was something more on her mind. He was slowly beginning to understand this woman. Too late perhaps, but he felt better for it. Right now, given the silence and her tense posture, she was holding back her thoughts from him, and he suddenly wanted to know them. “What is it?”
For a moment, he didn’t think she would answer him, he was being terribly nosy today, but then she tipped her head from side to side and sighed deeply. “When you leave today, be sure to return home straight away. Alice is very keen to see you.”
“For what purpose?”
Whitney straightened her shoulders. “The usual conversation between betrothed couples, I imagine.”
Wedding talk again? Gods, he’d rather not have to endure that conversation. Mrs. Quartermane was still hinting it was not too late to return to London for a marriage at St. George’s by special license. “I am on my way to speak with Taverham.”
“He was in the rose garden with Carrington last time I saw him. Smoking cigars.” Her nose wrinkled with distaste. “You should hurry and join them, and then leave to go straight home.”
“If you think I should,” he said slowly as he held Whitney’s gaze a long moment. “But I had intended to visit my sister after I speak with Taverham. Emily is lately complaining about my nighttime visits.”
“How often do you go to her?”
“Most days, unless there is work to be done. She’s become despondent in her solitude.” He winced, knowing Whitney had no reason to care about Emily’s state of mind. “I intend to take her out into the garden and enjoy the sunshine with her for a little while today, to see if that lifts her spirits.”
“It is a good idea. It is also good of you to care so much, after the embarrassment she must have put you through,” she murmured.
“She is my sister. I cannot turn my back on her now when she needs me,” he said, throat growing tight.
Whitney’s expression softened a little more. “It’s a nice day for a stroll.”
“Within the garden walls, not without,” he promised her quickly. “She’s not strong enough to go far without my support.”
She nodded slowly. “I am very sorry to hear it.
But don’t forget to seek out Alice after that,” she reminded him.
When she smiled again, he felt uneasy because it was very obviously forced. “I won’t forget Alice,” he murmured, wondering if that would always be true.
Chapter Thirteen
With one last glance at Whitney, Everett took his leave of her. The business with Taverham couldn’t wait. He passed through the kitchen garden, dodging the occasional flick of water aimed at him with a laugh, and looked ahead to the formal gardens. The rose garden stood more or less directly between Twilight Hill and Warstone Manor. If Taverham had been there at the time he’d passed this way, Everett would never have spoken to Whitney today.
He was glad he had.
His heart felt lighter, and it was nice that she accepted his determination to be a good brother. She was a good listener.
He tugged down his damp waistcoat, beginning to feel chilled in the breeze that curled around the ornamental trees on the manor’s southern side. At his home, where no tree stood less than twenty feet tall, it took a gale blowing for him to notice a change in the weather.
Twilit Hill had been designed, cultivated, with no allowance made for natural growth. A series of garden rooms, full of clipped hedges, garden beds and checkered paths, led visitors away from the manor and eventually to wide-open fields.
He was halfway through the rose garden when he spotted the marquess and viscount sitting in the shade together in a cloud of cigar smoke.
“Your mother will throw a fit,” Everett warned as he joined them.
Taverham blew a perfect ring of smoke and watched it float away. “I’m a grown man. I can do whatever I want.”
Viscount Carrington agreed, drawing on his cigar without a word.
Everett hadn’t had much to do with Viscount Carrington. He was related to Taverham through his marriage, but with Miranda gone for so long, encounters with him had been few and far between.
And this year, there’d been a scandal around the time Carrington had married, a broken engagement and breach-of-promise suit, that had become quite a messy and expensive affair. Since his marriage, viewed as unpopular by many, Carrington had rarely been seen, eschewing society for the company of friends and family and the children he’d taken in.
Hostesses had dropped him from their guest lists immediately and the loss of popularity had to hurt. But for all of that weighing on him, he seemed in good spirits now.
“You must do as you like, but within reason, surely. I’m positive your wife has opinions on many things,” Everett suggested, hopeful that his remark would not sound the least bit disparaging of the marchioness. It was a delicate line he walked, always taking pains to never unwittingly give offense. Not that Everett had found fault with the marchioness since her return to her marriage. He could not say he and the lady were friends yet, but she had chosen not to make him an enemy. He appreciated that she’d not believed he should be punished for Emily’s behavior. “I take it Miranda has no objections to cigars?”
“None as long as I air my clothes well and don’t kiss her straight after I return to the house,” Taverham confessed with an easy smile. He dug in his coat pocket.
“Agatha is much the same about cigars. I keep my smoking to the out of doors, too.” Carrington squinted at him. “I say, did you run afoul of my children on the way here?”
“How can you tell?” He was still uncomfortably damp. “But in their defense, it was my own fault I am in this state. I misunderstood the reason they were screaming and ran right into the fray.”
“And suffered for it.” Taverham came close, staring at his coat. “You could be wet enough to the skin to create your own puddle, I think.”
“Very likely.” Everett relaxed and declined the offer of a cigar from Taverham. He glanced around with a fond smile. “Emily always loved this garden.”
Taverham inhaled sharply. “I’d prefer you not mention that name to me again.”
“I must.” He glanced at Viscount Carrington. “Would you mind leaving us? I need to speak privately with the marquess.”
Carrington glanced between them and then nodded. “I’ll take a walk about the grounds while I finish this, and then head inside to help settle the children down for their dinner.”
The lanky viscount wandered off with an easy smile and jaunty wave.
“That was unnecessary,” Taverham warned when he was gone. “He’s family.”
“I know he is part of your family, but I’d rather what we talk about remain between us. It is about Emily that I wish to speak, and the garden she loved so much seems an appropriate place.”
“I cannot forgive her,” Taverham warned sternly. “She kept Christopher’s existence from me.”
“Yet, you still acknowledge your mother, and she knew about the boy, too, didn’t she?”
“That is entirely different,” the marquess claimed as he jumped to his feet. “Why do you think my mother moved to the dower house?”
But Taverham still spoke of the dowager marchioness, whereas Emily had been erased from any and every discussion. Everett understood why, but still, she was his sister. He was as appalled as anyone at her behavior, but that was the past. He only had the energy for the present. “Emily is here.”
“What?” Taverham roared.
Everett cringed at the fury in Taverham’s eyes. “Not here on your estate,” he hastened to add. “But she is at mine.”
“Since when? The ladies haven’t spoken of her.”
“They haven’t seen her,” Everett promised. “I moved Emily into Rose Cottage.”
Taverham advanced angrily, and Everett took a pace back, maintaining a distance between them for Taverham’s sake. They had never fought, not physically, and now was not the time to start over a situation he couldn’t change, even if he desperately wished to.
Taverham followed him. “How dare you put my son in danger?”
“Just listen to me,” Everett warned, his face heating. Bringing Emily home put everyone in danger, but not for the reasons Taverham assumed. Consumption was contagious, especially so for the young, old or infirm. Taverham had a son, an aging mother and a wife with a weak heart. “The boy is in no danger if he keeps to your lands, I promise you.”
Taverham turned away, ripped a rose bud from a vine and crushed it in his fist. “If she even looks twice at my boy, I will turn her over to the magistrate immediately and offer up all the sordid details of her behavior. I trusted you!”
Everett gritted his teeth. “I said he was safe, and I mean it. There is no excuse for her behavior. None,” he agreed.
“And yet you brought her within three miles of where we live?”
Taverham dug his fingertip into Everett’s breastbone so hard he winced.
“For God’s sake, listen,” he protested, and Taverham drew back, frowning. Everett turned away to gather his excuses into a coherent explanation. There were a group of gardeners gathering not too far away, so he lowered his voice to a conversational pitch. “I thought you said you would remain in London longer than you did. She was here when you first arrived, and I cannot move her now. She does not even know you have returned to the estate, and I don’t intend to tell her.”
“Someone is bound to tell her. Your fiancée will certainly mention us being here when they speak.” Taverham’s eyes widened. “I promised Miranda she could trust you. You promised to keep that bitch away from my family, and I thought she would travel as she always wished to.”
“She will remain at Rose Cottage for the foreseeable future.”
Taverham stared. “Have you lost your mind?”
“The garden gate is always locked.”
Taverham rocked back on his heels and raked a hand through his hair until it stood on end. He knew Rose Cottage well, having consulted on improvements in past years. The fact he’d locked the garden gate was an important point in his favor, as it ensured the boy’s continued safety. “You really confined her?”
“It is as much for her own safety as anyo
ne else’s,” Everett confessed, his voice thickened. “She is dying.”
Taverham shook his head swiftly. “Nonsense. A ruse. She’s after sympathy, as she always did as a girl. You could never see it. I will not fall prey to her pretty little lies again.”
Everett lifted his chin. He’d been fooled without a shadow of a doubt in the past, but Emily’s days of twisting him around her finger were well and truly done. “She has consumption. The doctors in London, and here, confirmed it. She is in a very bad way.”
Taverham took several paces back, his skin leeching of color. “Consumption?”
Everett took a steadying breath before he bared his soul further, hoping some good could come from total honesty about Emily. “She came to my house in London, sick with it, and, after speaking to the doctors I consulted, I drove her directly to Rose Cottage in my own carriage myself.”
“Is that why you left London without warning me?” Taverham appeared stunned. “That was weeks ago.”
“It was. I took her away before she could make any attempt to call upon you and your wife and son. That could have been disastrous, given Miranda’s fragile health and the boy’s fear.”
Taverham’s face colored red. “What do you expect me to do, now that you’ve told me about her? Wring my hands and wish her to get better soon? Weep at her bedside?” Taverham gestured to the gardeners who hovered at the edge of the garden and started pointing to the roses around them. “Take them all and burn them.”
The gardeners came with axes and shovels in hand and began to remove the rose bushes one by one, tossing them carelessly into barrows.
Everett’s chest tightened with sorrow at the destruction they wrought in such a short time. Emily had tended this part of Twilit Hill’s gardens as if it were her own. She’d spent hours here, coaxing the buds to bloom so that the man she loved in vain always had beauty around him. Seeing her act of hopeless love wiped from existence hurt more than he’d imagined it could.